August 25, 2024 • 28 mins
In this episode of Bleeding Daylight, Rodney Olsen welcomes Constance Hastings, an ordained deacon and mental health counselor, who has taken an intriguing journey from teaching to ministry. Constance opens up about her personal faith struggles and shares how asking tough, often unsettling questions has shaped her spiritual journey. Her experiences have culminated in her book *The Trouble with Jesus: Considerations Before You Walk Away*, which tackles the challenging aspects of faith and the unsettling figure of Jesus in both history and modern belief.
During their conversation, Constance discusses the importance of grappling with doubts and the complexities of faith, especially within the context of suffering and mental health. She highlights how mental illness is often misunderstood and stigmatized, even in Christian communities, and shares her perspective on how to address these issues with compassion and faith. This episode invites listeners to explore their own spiritual questions and reconsider their understanding of faith in light of life's most difficult challenges.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen.
Welcome, thanks for listening.
You can join the conversation on this and other episodes by connecting with Bleeding Daylight on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or other social media platforms.
(00:31):
You'll find all the links at bleedingdaylight.net as well as dozens of other episodes of Bleeding Daylight with some remarkable people telling their own stories.
Is it okay to ask God the big questions?
The scary questions?
Is it okay to doubt during the difficult times in life?
(00:51):
Today's guest is ready to ask her own scary questions.
Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with someone who has navigated a fascinating journey from teaching high school to becoming an ordained deacon with a focus on mental health counselling.
(01:13):
Constance Hastings brings a unique perspective shaped by her rich family heritage and diverse experiences.
Her passion for exploring profound questions and her commitment to addressing the tough, often unsettling issues ensure a fascinating conversation.
Her book, The Trouble with Jesus, Considerations Before You Walk Away, explores why both believers and sceptics are unsettled and provoked by the one who claimed to be the Son of God.
(01:42):
Constance, thank you so much for your time today.
Thank you for having me, Rodney.
Many of us grew up on a diet of TV shows that managed to neatly wrap up every life struggle at the end of a half-hour episode.
Unfortunately, there have been a lot of people of faith that have looked to live their lives in a similar way with easy answers that don't really satisfy.
(02:04):
When was it that you realized that life isn't quite that neat and it is okay to ask the scary questions?
It is okay to do that.
I've had, let's just say, a crisis of faith.
One time I was on a spiritual retreat with 50 women who all claimed that they loved me and how special and important I was to them and to God.
(02:26):
And then they left to go to some event that was off the campus and they forgot me.
It was a situation where just by mistake, I got left behind.
And here I was in this whole facility and I was the only one there.
(02:47):
It was night.
I walked outside.
I was totally alone.
And I started going down this road.
I was angry.
And I was kicking stones.
I was beginning to believe that the God that I had always known did not exist.
And when that came about, I just didn't know what to do.
And I came to the end of the road and there was this huge stop sign there.
(03:12):
It was bigger than normal kind of thing.
I looked at it and then I looked up into the heavens and I said, all right, God, what do you have to say about this?
Rodney, I can't tell you what happened then, except that the wind picked up and it was blowing very hard.
And it actually turned me in another direction.
(03:33):
And the next thing I came to realize was I was farther down that road and how that happened, I do not know.
I have no memory.
I have no way of explaining it, except that I was in a different place.
And that this burden I was feeling, this anger, this rejection, if you will, was just totally lifted.
(03:54):
It was one of those touchstones in my life where I realized that no matter what happens, God is always going to be there for me.
Of course, you didn't actually come to faith the way that many do in growing up in a home where faith is always present.
It was a little bit different for you.
Maybe you can explain how it was growing up and where faith figured in that life.
(04:17):
My parents were not religious.
My father didn't want to have anything to do with church.
My mother had been raised in a Southern Baptist home and she knew what she should do.
And she would take me to church and Sunday school.
But that ended when I was old enough to go myself.
At home, we didn't live that kind of life.
(04:41):
My father owned a bar.
My mother went along with the culture, let's just say, and clothes and those kinds of things were important to her.
We never really talked about anything that had to do with God or faith, except my mother kept up the front.
I have a picture of her posing in a chair with her spanking white Bible.
(05:06):
And yet, I don't know that she read it very much.
But as it was, and this was in the early 60s, a desegregation was happening within our state.
The schools were being integrated.
My parents did not put me in a public school with that going on, but down the street, there was a small private Christian school.
(05:28):
It wasn't very expensive.
So they sent me there.
It was there with the love and guidance of those teachers being taught to read actually from the Bible that my faith began.
I adopted for myself a faith that led me at the age of seven, one night to be on my knees because I felt so responsible for Jesus having to die on the cross.
(05:56):
I told him I was sorry for that.
Years later, I realized having read Pilgrim's Progress, this weight, this burden again being lifted off of me, that became the start of my faith journey.
And during that time, God just held on to me.
He honestly held on to me until it came to that time of being called into formal active ministry and being able to, as you said, reach out to people with mental health issues.
(06:25):
I know that it's a great blessing for those of us who were brought up in Christian homes and had that Christian nurturing.
But do you see that there are benefits for you in growing up in a home where faith was absent and you had to make your own journey yourself?
Oh, let's not call it a benefit.
But within God's plan, I saw how people resist God and the obstacles that people put up to God.
(06:52):
I still see it today among friends and family.
And yet, I began to incorporate a way in myself of explaining who God is in a way outside the usual vocabulary of the Christian faith and how we explain things within church.
(07:12):
In this book that I've written, The Trouble with Jesus, I don't think, well, maybe once, but in an explanatory way, do I talk about sin.
I talk about what we consider sin, not as breaking rules, but rather as not being in relationship with God and with others by our lives and lifestyles.
(07:39):
We resist that and we walk away from that.
It is maybe a unique understanding in that regard, but it's also been a blessing to me to be able to speak this.
Has there been any pushback from anyone when you've titled a book something as provocative as The Trouble with Jesus?
Oh, yes.
(08:00):
I've been told that there's a special place in hell reserved for me.
And they don't come that frequently, honestly.
But when things happen like that, or if I'm out somewhere and doing an event or book signing or whatever, and people see the title, They Got in Trouble with Jesus, it gives me the opportunity to explain that Jesus did experience trouble in his life.
(08:23):
He was born under very troubling circumstances.
His ministry raised questions that troubled people.
He also brought trouble to people.
All of that converged and basically brought about his death.
But he even overcame that.
He overcame death.
(08:43):
He rose from the dead.
Our life in him is meant to experience that support and that being able to overcome the trouble of the world until we meet him in eternity.
As you explain it, of course, Jesus did live a very troubling life to the point where he was crucified because of the trouble that he was bringing.
(09:06):
Do you think sometimes in the modern church we tend to sanitize that story, even though the facts are right there?
We tend to sanitize what Jesus was about?
I think that does happen in some ways.
Occasionally, you'll have a movie come out that's very graphic about the crucifixion.
The studies have shown that the Romans were very, very good at doing this.
(09:29):
I read somewhere that the Nazis actually studied the Romans when they were developing their tortures.
So, yes, we tend to not want to go into that kind of thing.
I also have found that there's resistance even to the ancient Hebrew scriptures talking about the blood sacrifices that God required.
(09:51):
People pull away from that without understanding that God and God and Jesus would take the worst of the world in order to come to the world and to prepare for us a life that is whole in him.
The church Christians need to be able to look at that, look at it hard, and be able to explain it, and in that explanation bring a realization that Jesus in his sacrifice of his life will do anything, God will do anything in order to have us come and be reconciled to him.
(10:31):
It is an amazing story that God would so desire to reconcile us back to himself, even though we were the ones at fault.
We were the ones who stepped away from him, and yet he continually wants to reconcile us to himself, and he was prepared to see Jesus go to the cross for that.
That does raise some scary questions, as you say, and you've been asking those scary questions and putting those sorts of things in front of people.
(10:59):
You mentioned your crisis of faith.
What are some of the other scary questions that you've had to grapple with throughout life?
Like most people, we come to a place where we have to grapple with suffering.
We ask, why God or where is God in this?
In my own family, I came to my marriage when my father-in-law had been ill for over 20 years with Parkinson's disease.
(11:28):
At that point, he was completely catatonic.
Before then, he had been a pastor in a church, and he was a pretty successful pastor and well-loved.
But when my husband was 12 years old and his sister was only about a year old, he developed this Parkinson's disease.
At the time, there weren't the medications that we have today, and he quickly deteriorated.
(11:55):
One Sunday morning, three times, he got up to stand in the pulpit and the tremors took over, and he had to be carried from the pulpit back to the parsonage, and he never went back.
The family then had to leave the ministry.
By the blessing of God, they owned a small home in another state, and they went there to live.
(12:18):
They had to take care of him.
My mother-in-law, of course, was his primary caretaker.
She took care of him at home for 38 years.
As I said, by the time I came to the family, he was catatonic, no ability to speak.
He eventually had to have a feeding tube and just slowly deteriorated.
(12:41):
Then when he finally passed, it crushed my mother-in-law.
He was her whole life.
She just went through grief for a long, long time.
People would think, well, now you don't have to be under this burden, but he was not a burden to her, and she would have taken him back at any time.
When these kinds of things happen in life, when we wonder, when we ask, here was a man of God, what could he have done if he had had a vibrant, healthy life and was able to finish out his ministry, we step back and we have to begin to realize that we don't know all the answers.
(13:19):
There are things going on that we don't know, that we can't see, but God asks of us, do you believe?
That's what Jesus puts before us as well.
In the story where Mary and Martha's brother passes away, he says to her, I am the resurrection and the life.
(13:40):
Do you believe this?
That question reverberates into all our lives.
Sometimes we have to answer that question.
Do you believe this?
That's the choice that is before us.
There are so many questions that do come across as scary.
There are skeptics that are asking questions, but I think sometimes some people within the church forget to continue to ask questions.
(14:05):
Yet God delights in us asking questions of Him.
As you say, there's not always the answer that we expect and there's not always a direct answer, but how important is it that we continue to struggle with our faith and take those things to God?
It is important because our faith needs to be strengthened.
(14:27):
Yes, life is going to be full of challenges, and yes, we need a strong faith to address those challenges.
The apostle Paul compares it to running a race in life.
That is very true.
We are very much challenged.
Do I believe that God deliberately sends us problems so that that will happen?
(14:47):
No.
I believe that that is just a part of life, the broken creation in which we live, how we will experience these, but God's promise is always to carry us through.
Again, Jesus says to us, I have overcome it, and to rest in Him is to overcome the troubles of the world and have that strength to meet those challenges.
(15:11):
You became an ordained deacon with a specific focus on mental health counseling.
What was it that drew you to that specifically?
Lord knows.
Previous to understanding that this was a call upon my life, there were people in my church and sometimes we would talk.
(15:32):
After we finished talking, they would say, you listen really well.
Have you ever thought about being a counselor?
Well, at the time, I was an instructor at a community college, and my dearest hope and desire was to be able to get a full-time job there, and I thought of it as a ministry.
(15:54):
My position often brought me in contact with adults whose education was insufficient to be able to handle college-level work.
I would work with them and help them raise their skills so they could go on and be successful in their lives in whatever chosen fields they had.
Often, students and I outside of the classroom would talk about our faith, so it seemed to me a good ministry and God should be pretty happy with that.
(16:22):
My family also experienced mental illness.
Mental illness isn't something that just happens to someone suddenly.
It's something that we all have to be aware of.
It's kind of like you go through life and you think you're fine, and then you could get a cold, so you get over that cold.
(16:42):
Or you can develop something more serious, say, bronchitis, and that could be a problem for you.
In the same way in life, there are going to be times when we are sad, when we are afraid, but we can work through them.
But other times, depression may come upon us, and other times it's going to be some kind of severe debilitating anxiety.
(17:07):
To be mentally strong, to be able to build ourselves in such a way that we have faith and the thought processes that keep us healthy will help us overcome those times when these afflictions do occur.
It's very much like having any kind of physical illness, and we know that if we have a proper diet and we exercise and other ways of taking care of ourselves, that we have a measure of strength and immunity against these, and in the same way it is with our mental health.
(17:42):
That's really what kind of brought me into that.
I wouldn't have chosen it for myself, but I learned so much.
I have learned so much about not just mental health, but faith, and particularly from people who are in recovery.
I spent a number of years facilitating a Celebrate Recovery group.
(18:04):
Those participants taught me so much, not just about their struggles, but what it takes to turn over your life completely to God, claim Jesus Christ as your higher power, and I was very much blessed by them.
We know that over many years there has been a real stigma that's been attached to mental health issues, and thankfully that has lessened over time, but I imagine that's still an issue and probably still quite an issue within the Christian church, where people would expect that you can just pray that away.
(18:39):
How much is that a factor when you're dealing with people who are facing those struggles, which, as you say, you can catch a cold or a disease, and this is some sort of a health issue that affects the mind.
Is there still that stigma, and how do you deal with that?
You're correct, Rodney.
It's not what it used to be, but it's still there.
It's still one of those things, well, that happens to other people, that happens in other families, that doesn't happen to us.
(19:04):
Again, in my story, when these kinds of things first appeared, we didn't know what to do with it.
We didn't know where to go.
We didn't recognize what was happening.
Today, I think we have better education and people have more resources, and yet there still is that sense that, well, I should be strong enough to do this on my own.
(19:26):
I shouldn't have to take medications.
I don't think medications are the complete answer, but I wouldn't refuse someone with high blood pressure their medication or someone who is diabetic with their medications.
Mental illness has its physiological roots.
You can see in brain scans what's happening in the brain and pinpoint the different areas, which today is a blessing.
(19:52):
As far as the stigma is concerned, people still have that sense, well, you just pray harder, you just have more faith, and you won't feel that way.
We've touched on your book, The Trouble With Jesus, Considerations Before You Walk Away.
Tell me, what led you to decide to write that book?
I had not intended to write a book.
(20:15):
I was asked by a church, not my own, to do a Saturday morning, three-hour women's Bible study, sort of a mini-retreat kind of thing.
They gave me several months to think about it, but I couldn't come up with anything.
I looked at the scriptures and nothing connected.
(20:36):
I knew my audience.
These were women who were very successful, professional, intelligent.
I had a good sense that the usual women's stories weren't going to resonate deeply with them, and I always want that impact to be there.
In frustration one day, I just looked up and I said, The Troubles With Jesus, that was it.
(21:00):
It was like, yeah.
Soon, as I did the outline, I could see pages forming around the different points that I was making about this.
I realized, this is the outline for a book.
I went ahead and I did the study at that church and also another church.
Again, began to form this perspective that this could be a book someday.
(21:25):
I held it close until about six years ago, I was able finally to sit down and devote the attention that it needed and start that journey of having a book being published by the grace of God.
How would you describe to someone what they would find?
If they bought a copy of this book, what would they find between the covers?
(21:47):
First of all, in the book, there is an edgy voice.
This is the voice that I call the doubter or the skeptic.
I'm going to read to you the first paragraph of the book.
This is how it starts.
Now, let's be clear about this.
You can tell your story any way you see it.
I can jump in with my two-bit commentary when I want, but none of this, believe it or you're going to burn crap.
(22:14):
I'm only willing to listen because I agree Jesus' story might have some things I like about it, but it's my choice what I do with it.
I've been given other belief systems about the universe, how we got there, and what it means to pass through this life.
I guess though that I think there's more.
I'm willing to give Jesus the benefit of the doubt, and doubt is what I bring to this table.
(22:38):
I use that voice throughout the book to challenge the narration that explains who Jesus is.
Readers are going to find that sometimes maybe even interruptive because that's the voice, the doubter that comes to this table, the trouble that this person may have with Jesus.
(23:00):
Begin to approach it with, again, this perspective of the trouble that Jesus met in his own life.
We start with his birth story.
Christmas is usually all the celebrations that we have, but it's not a very pretty story.
A young girl finds herself pregnant, not by the man to whom she's supposed to be married, and life goes downhill from there, basically.
(23:24):
We don't talk about it during the Christmas story, but the end of it is after the wise men leave, the king, in his paranoid concern that he is going to be overthrown by this new king, goes to Bethlehem and has all the baby boys under two years old slaughtered.
That is the coming of the Son of God.
(23:45):
I've had people say, nobody ever talks about this part of the gospel, but it's real, and we have to look at it, and we have to address it in that regard.
Also, at the end of each chapter is a section called Further Provocations for Your Consideration, and that's a series of open-ended questions which the reader can use to continue thinking more deeply about what is raised in each chapter.
(24:10):
They're pretty pointed in what we have to consider in our beliefs.
I think oftentimes we don't feel that we have the license to ask the big questions, or as you say, the scary questions.
How important is it for someone to be able to take on something like this book and have a look and say, uh-huh, it's okay that I doubt, it's okay that I have big questions, but I now need to know where to direct these questions?
(24:42):
We can look at the book of Job, and Job had lots of questions and cried out to God.
We can look in the Psalms.
Oh my goodness, you can hardly read any one of the 150 Psalms and not find this crying out to God in pain and misery.
We can look even at the disciples.
(25:04):
Thomas had real doubts about Jesus' resurrection.
Peter, he was a mess most of the time.
You wonder, why did Jesus choose people like this to be his disciples, his initial trainees into the faith?
It's okay.
We cannot bring before God anything that God hasn't heard before.
(25:28):
That's the open relationship which we have.
I've been in times where I've said, God, look, you got to do something about this.
The other part of that is we sometimes look to God in what in the book I refer to as the divine fixer.
We want him to fix all of our problems.
(25:51):
Consider when Jesus fed the 5,000.
Magnificent miracle of multiplication happens there.
Then what happened?
Goes to the other side of the lake, people stalk him there, and they want it again.
That's what we want.
We want God to keep giving us what we want and not realize that there may be another plan.
(26:14):
This is not original to me, but we want to have relationship with God in an advisory capacity.
We want to be able to tell God what to do.
That's not how it works again when we come back to those big questions.
Those big questions often find their roots in our life experiences and our needs and looking to God for that which is greater, for that which is in the kingdom of heaven and which he will fulfill in that way.
(26:43):
I can see that it's going to be a book that is going to be well-loved by people wherever they sit in their walk of faith.
What's the response that you've had back so far from people that have had the opportunity to read the book?
People that have read it, that have gotten into it, they say to me, this is really good.
(27:04):
I need to read it slowly.
That tells me that there's a depth to it, that they are making those considerations in their life and where they are.
That to me is most rewarding.
Constance, I'm sure that there are many people who want to get hold of this book for themselves, but also it's going to be a help for them as they introduce Jesus to others.
(27:29):
I will put links in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can get hold of the book easily or be in touch with you.
I just want to thank you for this conversation and thank you for spending your time today on Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you, Rodney, for having me.
Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
(27:50):
Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others.
For further details and more episodes, please visit bleedingdaylight.net.
Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen.
Welcome, thanks for listening.
You can join the conversation on this and other episodes by connecting with Bleeding Daylight on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or other social media platforms.
(00:31):
You'll find all the links at bleedingdaylight.net as well as dozens of other episodes of Bleeding Daylight with some remarkable people telling their own stories.
Is it okay to ask God the big questions?
The scary questions?
Is it okay to doubt during the difficult times in life?
(00:51):
Today's guest is ready to ask her own scary questions.
Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with someone who has navigated a fascinating journey from teaching high school to becoming an ordained deacon with a focus on mental health counselling.
(01:13):
Constance Hastings brings a unique perspective shaped by her rich family heritage and diverse experiences.
Her passion for exploring profound questions and her commitment to addressing the tough, often unsettling issues ensure a fascinating conversation.
Her book, The Trouble with Jesus, Considerations Before You Walk Away, explores why both believers and sceptics are unsettled and provoked by the one who claimed to be the Son of God.
(01:42):
Constance, thank you so much for your time today.
Thank you for having me, Rodney.
Many of us grew up on a diet of TV shows that managed to neatly wrap up every life struggle at the end of a half-hour episode.
Unfortunately, there have been a lot of people of faith that have looked to live their lives in a similar way with easy answers that don't really satisfy.
(02:04):
When was it that you realized that life isn't quite that neat and it is okay to ask the scary questions?
It is okay to do that.
I've had, let's just say, a crisis of faith.
One time I was on a spiritual retreat with 50 women who all claimed that they loved me and how special and important I was to them and to God.
(02:26):
And then they left to go to some event that was off the campus and they forgot me.
It was a situation where just by mistake, I got left behind.
And here I was in this whole facility and I was the only one there.
(02:47):
It was night.
I walked outside.
I was totally alone.
And I started going down this road.
I was angry.
And I was kicking stones.
I was beginning to believe that the God that I had always known did not exist.
And when that came about, I just didn't know what to do.
And I came to the end of the road and there was this huge stop sign there.
(03:12):
It was bigger than normal kind of thing.
I looked at it and then I looked up into the heavens and I said, all right, God, what do you have to say about this?
Rodney, I can't tell you what happened then, except that the wind picked up and it was blowing very hard.
And it actually turned me in another direction.
(03:33):
And the next thing I came to realize was I was farther down that road and how that happened, I do not know.
I have no memory.
I have no way of explaining it, except that I was in a different place.
And that this burden I was feeling, this anger, this rejection, if you will, was just totally lifted.
(03:54):
It was one of those touchstones in my life where I realized that no matter what happens, God is always going to be there for me.
Of course, you didn't actually come to faith the way that many do in growing up in a home where faith is always present.
It was a little bit different for you.
Maybe you can explain how it was growing up and where faith figured in that life.
(04:17):
My parents were not religious.
My father didn't want to have anything to do with church.
My mother had been raised in a Southern Baptist home and she knew what she should do.
And she would take me to church and Sunday school.
But that ended when I was old enough to go myself.
At home, we didn't live that kind of life.
(04:41):
My father owned a bar.
My mother went along with the culture, let's just say, and clothes and those kinds of things were important to her.
We never really talked about anything that had to do with God or faith, except my mother kept up the front.
I have a picture of her posing in a chair with her spanking white Bible.
(05:06):
And yet, I don't know that she read it very much.
But as it was, and this was in the early 60s, a desegregation was happening within our state.
The schools were being integrated.
My parents did not put me in a public school with that going on, but down the street, there was a small private Christian school.
(05:28):
It wasn't very expensive.
So they sent me there.
It was there with the love and guidance of those teachers being taught to read actually from the Bible that my faith began.
I adopted for myself a faith that led me at the age of seven, one night to be on my knees because I felt so responsible for Jesus having to die on the cross.
(05:56):
I told him I was sorry for that.
Years later, I realized having read Pilgrim's Progress, this weight, this burden again being lifted off of me, that became the start of my faith journey.
And during that time, God just held on to me.
He honestly held on to me until it came to that time of being called into formal active ministry and being able to, as you said, reach out to people with mental health issues.
(06:25):
I know that it's a great blessing for those of us who were brought up in Christian homes and had that Christian nurturing.
But do you see that there are benefits for you in growing up in a home where faith was absent and you had to make your own journey yourself?
Oh, let's not call it a benefit.
But within God's plan, I saw how people resist God and the obstacles that people put up to God.
(06:52):
I still see it today among friends and family.
And yet, I began to incorporate a way in myself of explaining who God is in a way outside the usual vocabulary of the Christian faith and how we explain things within church.
(07:12):
In this book that I've written, The Trouble with Jesus, I don't think, well, maybe once, but in an explanatory way, do I talk about sin.
I talk about what we consider sin, not as breaking rules, but rather as not being in relationship with God and with others by our lives and lifestyles.
(07:39):
We resist that and we walk away from that.
It is maybe a unique understanding in that regard, but it's also been a blessing to me to be able to speak this.
Has there been any pushback from anyone when you've titled a book something as provocative as The Trouble with Jesus?
Oh, yes.
(08:00):
I've been told that there's a special place in hell reserved for me.
And they don't come that frequently, honestly.
But when things happen like that, or if I'm out somewhere and doing an event or book signing or whatever, and people see the title, They Got in Trouble with Jesus, it gives me the opportunity to explain that Jesus did experience trouble in his life.
(08:23):
He was born under very troubling circumstances.
His ministry raised questions that troubled people.
He also brought trouble to people.
All of that converged and basically brought about his death.
But he even overcame that.
He overcame death.
(08:43):
He rose from the dead.
Our life in him is meant to experience that support and that being able to overcome the trouble of the world until we meet him in eternity.
As you explain it, of course, Jesus did live a very troubling life to the point where he was crucified because of the trouble that he was bringing.
(09:06):
Do you think sometimes in the modern church we tend to sanitize that story, even though the facts are right there?
We tend to sanitize what Jesus was about?
I think that does happen in some ways.
Occasionally, you'll have a movie come out that's very graphic about the crucifixion.
The studies have shown that the Romans were very, very good at doing this.
(09:29):
I read somewhere that the Nazis actually studied the Romans when they were developing their tortures.
So, yes, we tend to not want to go into that kind of thing.
I also have found that there's resistance even to the ancient Hebrew scriptures talking about the blood sacrifices that God required.
(09:51):
People pull away from that without understanding that God and God and Jesus would take the worst of the world in order to come to the world and to prepare for us a life that is whole in him.
The church Christians need to be able to look at that, look at it hard, and be able to explain it, and in that explanation bring a realization that Jesus in his sacrifice of his life will do anything, God will do anything in order to have us come and be reconciled to him.
(10:31):
It is an amazing story that God would so desire to reconcile us back to himself, even though we were the ones at fault.
We were the ones who stepped away from him, and yet he continually wants to reconcile us to himself, and he was prepared to see Jesus go to the cross for that.
That does raise some scary questions, as you say, and you've been asking those scary questions and putting those sorts of things in front of people.
(10:59):
You mentioned your crisis of faith.
What are some of the other scary questions that you've had to grapple with throughout life?
Like most people, we come to a place where we have to grapple with suffering.
We ask, why God or where is God in this?
In my own family, I came to my marriage when my father-in-law had been ill for over 20 years with Parkinson's disease.
(11:28):
At that point, he was completely catatonic.
Before then, he had been a pastor in a church, and he was a pretty successful pastor and well-loved.
But when my husband was 12 years old and his sister was only about a year old, he developed this Parkinson's disease.
At the time, there weren't the medications that we have today, and he quickly deteriorated.
(11:55):
One Sunday morning, three times, he got up to stand in the pulpit and the tremors took over, and he had to be carried from the pulpit back to the parsonage, and he never went back.
The family then had to leave the ministry.
By the blessing of God, they owned a small home in another state, and they went there to live.
(12:18):
They had to take care of him.
My mother-in-law, of course, was his primary caretaker.
She took care of him at home for 38 years.
As I said, by the time I came to the family, he was catatonic, no ability to speak.
He eventually had to have a feeding tube and just slowly deteriorated.
(12:41):
Then when he finally passed, it crushed my mother-in-law.
He was her whole life.
She just went through grief for a long, long time.
People would think, well, now you don't have to be under this burden, but he was not a burden to her, and she would have taken him back at any time.
When these kinds of things happen in life, when we wonder, when we ask, here was a man of God, what could he have done if he had had a vibrant, healthy life and was able to finish out his ministry, we step back and we have to begin to realize that we don't know all the answers.
(13:19):
There are things going on that we don't know, that we can't see, but God asks of us, do you believe?
That's what Jesus puts before us as well.
In the story where Mary and Martha's brother passes away, he says to her, I am the resurrection and the life.
(13:40):
Do you believe this?
That question reverberates into all our lives.
Sometimes we have to answer that question.
Do you believe this?
That's the choice that is before us.
There are so many questions that do come across as scary.
There are skeptics that are asking questions, but I think sometimes some people within the church forget to continue to ask questions.
(14:05):
Yet God delights in us asking questions of Him.
As you say, there's not always the answer that we expect and there's not always a direct answer, but how important is it that we continue to struggle with our faith and take those things to God?
It is important because our faith needs to be strengthened.
(14:27):
Yes, life is going to be full of challenges, and yes, we need a strong faith to address those challenges.
The apostle Paul compares it to running a race in life.
That is very true.
We are very much challenged.
Do I believe that God deliberately sends us problems so that that will happen?
(14:47):
No.
I believe that that is just a part of life, the broken creation in which we live, how we will experience these, but God's promise is always to carry us through.
Again, Jesus says to us, I have overcome it, and to rest in Him is to overcome the troubles of the world and have that strength to meet those challenges.
(15:11):
You became an ordained deacon with a specific focus on mental health counseling.
What was it that drew you to that specifically?
Lord knows.
Previous to understanding that this was a call upon my life, there were people in my church and sometimes we would talk.
(15:32):
After we finished talking, they would say, you listen really well.
Have you ever thought about being a counselor?
Well, at the time, I was an instructor at a community college, and my dearest hope and desire was to be able to get a full-time job there, and I thought of it as a ministry.
(15:54):
My position often brought me in contact with adults whose education was insufficient to be able to handle college-level work.
I would work with them and help them raise their skills so they could go on and be successful in their lives in whatever chosen fields they had.
Often, students and I outside of the classroom would talk about our faith, so it seemed to me a good ministry and God should be pretty happy with that.
(16:22):
My family also experienced mental illness.
Mental illness isn't something that just happens to someone suddenly.
It's something that we all have to be aware of.
It's kind of like you go through life and you think you're fine, and then you could get a cold, so you get over that cold.
(16:42):
Or you can develop something more serious, say, bronchitis, and that could be a problem for you.
In the same way in life, there are going to be times when we are sad, when we are afraid, but we can work through them.
But other times, depression may come upon us, and other times it's going to be some kind of severe debilitating anxiety.
(17:07):
To be mentally strong, to be able to build ourselves in such a way that we have faith and the thought processes that keep us healthy will help us overcome those times when these afflictions do occur.
It's very much like having any kind of physical illness, and we know that if we have a proper diet and we exercise and other ways of taking care of ourselves, that we have a measure of strength and immunity against these, and in the same way it is with our mental health.
(17:42):
That's really what kind of brought me into that.
I wouldn't have chosen it for myself, but I learned so much.
I have learned so much about not just mental health, but faith, and particularly from people who are in recovery.
I spent a number of years facilitating a Celebrate Recovery group.
(18:04):
Those participants taught me so much, not just about their struggles, but what it takes to turn over your life completely to God, claim Jesus Christ as your higher power, and I was very much blessed by them.
We know that over many years there has been a real stigma that's been attached to mental health issues, and thankfully that has lessened over time, but I imagine that's still an issue and probably still quite an issue within the Christian church, where people would expect that you can just pray that away.
(18:39):
How much is that a factor when you're dealing with people who are facing those struggles, which, as you say, you can catch a cold or a disease, and this is some sort of a health issue that affects the mind.
Is there still that stigma, and how do you deal with that?
You're correct, Rodney.
It's not what it used to be, but it's still there.
It's still one of those things, well, that happens to other people, that happens in other families, that doesn't happen to us.
(19:04):
Again, in my story, when these kinds of things first appeared, we didn't know what to do with it.
We didn't know where to go.
We didn't recognize what was happening.
Today, I think we have better education and people have more resources, and yet there still is that sense that, well, I should be strong enough to do this on my own.
(19:26):
I shouldn't have to take medications.
I don't think medications are the complete answer, but I wouldn't refuse someone with high blood pressure their medication or someone who is diabetic with their medications.
Mental illness has its physiological roots.
You can see in brain scans what's happening in the brain and pinpoint the different areas, which today is a blessing.
(19:52):
As far as the stigma is concerned, people still have that sense, well, you just pray harder, you just have more faith, and you won't feel that way.
We've touched on your book, The Trouble With Jesus, Considerations Before You Walk Away.
Tell me, what led you to decide to write that book?
I had not intended to write a book.
(20:15):
I was asked by a church, not my own, to do a Saturday morning, three-hour women's Bible study, sort of a mini-retreat kind of thing.
They gave me several months to think about it, but I couldn't come up with anything.
I looked at the scriptures and nothing connected.
(20:36):
I knew my audience.
These were women who were very successful, professional, intelligent.
I had a good sense that the usual women's stories weren't going to resonate deeply with them, and I always want that impact to be there.
In frustration one day, I just looked up and I said, The Troubles With Jesus, that was it.
(21:00):
It was like, yeah.
Soon, as I did the outline, I could see pages forming around the different points that I was making about this.
I realized, this is the outline for a book.
I went ahead and I did the study at that church and also another church.
Again, began to form this perspective that this could be a book someday.
(21:25):
I held it close until about six years ago, I was able finally to sit down and devote the attention that it needed and start that journey of having a book being published by the grace of God.
How would you describe to someone what they would find?
If they bought a copy of this book, what would they find between the covers?
(21:47):
First of all, in the book, there is an edgy voice.
This is the voice that I call the doubter or the skeptic.
I'm going to read to you the first paragraph of the book.
This is how it starts.
Now, let's be clear about this.
You can tell your story any way you see it.
I can jump in with my two-bit commentary when I want, but none of this, believe it or you're going to burn crap.
(22:14):
I'm only willing to listen because I agree Jesus' story might have some things I like about it, but it's my choice what I do with it.
I've been given other belief systems about the universe, how we got there, and what it means to pass through this life.
I guess though that I think there's more.
I'm willing to give Jesus the benefit of the doubt, and doubt is what I bring to this table.
(22:38):
I use that voice throughout the book to challenge the narration that explains who Jesus is.
Readers are going to find that sometimes maybe even interruptive because that's the voice, the doubter that comes to this table, the trouble that this person may have with Jesus.
(23:00):
Begin to approach it with, again, this perspective of the trouble that Jesus met in his own life.
We start with his birth story.
Christmas is usually all the celebrations that we have, but it's not a very pretty story.
A young girl finds herself pregnant, not by the man to whom she's supposed to be married, and life goes downhill from there, basically.
(23:24):
We don't talk about it during the Christmas story, but the end of it is after the wise men leave, the king, in his paranoid concern that he is going to be overthrown by this new king, goes to Bethlehem and has all the baby boys under two years old slaughtered.
That is the coming of the Son of God.
(23:45):
I've had people say, nobody ever talks about this part of the gospel, but it's real, and we have to look at it, and we have to address it in that regard.
Also, at the end of each chapter is a section called Further Provocations for Your Consideration, and that's a series of open-ended questions which the reader can use to continue thinking more deeply about what is raised in each chapter.
(24:10):
They're pretty pointed in what we have to consider in our beliefs.
I think oftentimes we don't feel that we have the license to ask the big questions, or as you say, the scary questions.
How important is it for someone to be able to take on something like this book and have a look and say, uh-huh, it's okay that I doubt, it's okay that I have big questions, but I now need to know where to direct these questions?
(24:42):
We can look at the book of Job, and Job had lots of questions and cried out to God.
We can look in the Psalms.
Oh my goodness, you can hardly read any one of the 150 Psalms and not find this crying out to God in pain and misery.
We can look even at the disciples.
(25:04):
Thomas had real doubts about Jesus' resurrection.
Peter, he was a mess most of the time.
You wonder, why did Jesus choose people like this to be his disciples, his initial trainees into the faith?
It's okay.
We cannot bring before God anything that God hasn't heard before.
(25:28):
That's the open relationship which we have.
I've been in times where I've said, God, look, you got to do something about this.
The other part of that is we sometimes look to God in what in the book I refer to as the divine fixer.
We want him to fix all of our problems.
(25:51):
Consider when Jesus fed the 5,000.
Magnificent miracle of multiplication happens there.
Then what happened?
Goes to the other side of the lake, people stalk him there, and they want it again.
That's what we want.
We want God to keep giving us what we want and not realize that there may be another plan.
(26:14):
This is not original to me, but we want to have relationship with God in an advisory capacity.
We want to be able to tell God what to do.
That's not how it works again when we come back to those big questions.
Those big questions often find their roots in our life experiences and our needs and looking to God for that which is greater, for that which is in the kingdom of heaven and which he will fulfill in that way.
(26:43):
I can see that it's going to be a book that is going to be well-loved by people wherever they sit in their walk of faith.
What's the response that you've had back so far from people that have had the opportunity to read the book?
People that have read it, that have gotten into it, they say to me, this is really good.
(27:04):
I need to read it slowly.
That tells me that there's a depth to it, that they are making those considerations in their life and where they are.
That to me is most rewarding.
Constance, I'm sure that there are many people who want to get hold of this book for themselves, but also it's going to be a help for them as they introduce Jesus to others.
(27:29):
I will put links in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can get hold of the book easily or be in touch with you.
I just want to thank you for this conversation and thank you for spending your time today on Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you, Rodney, for having me.
Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
(27:50):
Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others.
For further details and more episodes, please visit bleedingdaylight.net.
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